


Encryption

by rotrude



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Military, British Military, First Meetings, M/M, Playfair code, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:41:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3255254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotrude/pseuds/rotrude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WW1, Cryptologist Merlin Emrys's skilled are commandeered for a risky job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Encryption

**Author's Note:**

> This was a one shot written back in June for the tavern_tales Hackers, Robots, AI theme. I just remembered about it and so here it is.

Admiralty Building, London, January 1915

With no acknowledgments from the officers manning the positions around him, Merlin fiddles with his collar, smooths his wing tips down, and sits at his desk. He removes his cap and rests it on top of a stack of folders precariously perched at the edge of his work top. He moves the vase Freya must have put there. It's filled to the brim with small drooping flowers that descend in an arc of soft petals. They catch the artificial light of the fixtures overhead, single light bulb strings emanating a mild orange glow from between miles of lead pipework, and their colours change to a myriad other hues.

Before getting down to work, he squeezes his sinuses and cracks his fingers. He activates the teleprinter, watches the machine as it whirs to life, and prints the first message of the day on paper tape. Even before the re-perforator starts producing a punched copy of the message, Merlin makes a grab for the slip.

When both slips are out, Merlin compares them. If you allow for the differences between the wheel printed telegraph copy and the the perforated one, they're identical. He starts working on the first. He gives a look at the code, designing an imaginary square around the blocks of letters, and smiles. It's an easy one, a fine if basic example of Playfair Code. He doesn't even need his encryption book to decipher this. He could do this blind.

The key is Camelot. And the message says: Troops moved to Suez.

Merlin transcribes the decoded message, makes to move onto the next one. He's about to blindly catch another slip, when someone clacks their boots in his general vicinity. It's not as customary a noise as one would think – the clacks of the telegraph machine being more ordinary –, so Merlin looks up.

A commander – the three gold bands of his insignia proclaim as much -- stands before him, cap under his arm, chin up, shoulders drawn back, his chin thrust out. He's blonde, blue eyed, his hair combed and oiled backwards, the picture of the perfect Navy officer, his uniform starched to unyielding rigidity. Merlin would think him a toy soldier if not for the brightness of his eyes, evident even in the artificial light of the room, and the slightly put out arch of his lip, a downward swipe that's sharper right at the corner of his mouth than at the centre. Twin little lines bracket his moue.

Next to him slouches a second officer, a lieutenant, his hair's dark as the other man's is blond. Stubble shades his face and cuts under his cheekbones and chin. Even so he doesn't look wholly unkempt; his uniform sits neatly on his shoulders and his blue trousers fit him like a glove. His boots shine with polish, not a speck of dust on them.

The Commander says, “Lieutenant Commander Emrys?”

Merlin stands, salutes, perhaps a little half-heartedly, his eyes furtively casing the teleprinter and the new message it's spitting out. “Sir.”

“Come with us,” the Commander says, with a little nip of the head to the side.

“Uh, sir,” he says, arching his eyebrow at his desk and the chugging teleprinter, “I can't leave my post until 18.00.”

Frown lines gouge the Commander's forehead. “I'm your superior officer. You'll do as I say.”

Merlin moves to an at rest position, coughs into his fist. “I respond directly to Admiral Oliver, sir.”

“Not anymore, you don't,” the Commander says, nodding to his companion, who hands Merlin a sealed letter.

After he's undone the waxed seal, crusts of it staining his nails and the half moon of flesh between index and thumb red, Merlin reads it, scans the signature twice, then lets his mouth fall open. “I--”

“You'll be following us outside,” the Commander says, brisk, no-nonsense.

Though the Commander glares daggers at him for it, Merlin deactivates the teleprinter before complying. When he's ready, he follows the officer along a maze of grey corridors wainscoted up to chest height in polished hazelnut and down a flight of marble stairs veined with grey. As they tread them, they run into an array of officers and petty officers, secretaries and other civilian staff. At last they spill onto a quadrangular courtyard, shadowed by the white and red façade of the Admiralty Building. It's not empty so they move towards towards a more secluded part of it. A series of benches coasts the west wing wall. No one's using them.

They make for them, the Commander leading, Merlin and the lieutenant in his wings. They don't sit, but stand by them.

It's the Commander who starts speaking. “I'm Commander Pendragon and you've been drafted into my unit.”

“I can't have been,” Merlin says, shaking his head. “I've been working for Sir James Ewing for the past two years and he hasn't mentioned transferring me anywhere. Admiral Oliver agrees.”

“I asked him for his best cryptographer,” Commander Pendragon says, “and for some reason he says it was you.”

“Oh,” Merlin says, smiling, then frowns when he parses what Commander Pendragon has actually said. “What do you mean for some reason?” He straightens, goes so rigid his elbows might pop out of their joints and adds, “Sir.”

“You aren't great at respecting the chain of command,” Commander Pendragon says, startling a laugh from his lieutenant. "Are you?"

“We're not big on it at Room 40, sir,” Merlin says, telling it like it is. Officers like Merlin just decrypt. They seldom come in touch with other officers and have little reason to mingle with superiors pulling rank. “We do our part and pass the data on. We're not even allowed to analyse it. We don't talk much to outsiders either, what with security clearances and what not.”

Commander Pendragon arches both eyebrows. “I wonder how you made officer with that attitude of yours.”

Merlin taps his forehead. “Brains, sir.”

Commander Pendragon frames his mouth into a distempered pout, though some kind of amused light shines in his eyes. “Well, you'll have to get used to receiving orders from me, seeing as you won't have a civilian superior anymore.”

“Sir,” Merlin says, because this time he doesn't see how he can get out of this without complaining to the Admiralty. And it's not as if he has pull. “I-- Yes, sir.”

“Now, as for the specifics of the situation,” Commander Pendragon says. “We have intercepted a German agent in Persia two weeks ago. He was carrying a valise full of documents. The code that's gone into the cypher seems unbreakable. You'll have to decode it for us.”

“I'll try my best, sir,” Merlin says, wondering what kind of code that could be. Nothing they've seen before? Such things are rare but this could be the case if the code's been analysed by experts and deemed unbreakable. An encryption method they have encountered before but that's been disguised into something differnt enough it appears new? Merlin can't rule that theory out. “But I'll have to have as many samples as you can provide me with. The longer, the better.”

“Good,” Commander Pendragon says. “Report for duty on HMS Albemarle tomorrow at 07.00.”

Merlin salutes. “Sir.”

Commander Pendragon nods and walks away, his soles clopping and clicking against the cobblestoned courtyard in an in-beat that has something of the tattoo about it..

His lieutenant winks at Merlin, says, “Welcome to the team.”

Merlin holds the salute though the corners of his mouth lift and his eyes thin at the corners.

 

The End


End file.
